Syrian opposition makes plans for hours following Assad departure

The Syrian opposition has planned the hours after the fall of the Assad regime, placing an urgent priority on security the government's arsenal of chemical weapons.

An anti-regime demonstration in Binnish in the restive northern region of Idlib, Syria Photo: AFP

By Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv

10:48AM BST 29 May 2012

A senior officer in the Syrian opposition claims a committee has been established to prepare for the inevitable chaos that will follow the collapse the Assad regime after more than 40 years.

One of the militia's first actions will be to seize control of the country's chemical warfare stockpile, which is thought to be one of the largest in the world and contain deadly chemical agents such as Sarin and the nerve agent VX.

"We have divided the aftermath into four periods with different priorities for each day. The first period is the first day, the first hours after Assad's control breaks down, and one of the priorities during those hours is taking control of the chemical weapons so they won't fall into the hands of terrorists," the Syrian opposition source told Haaretz.

"We know the locations of the chemical weapon stores and we will be ready to move and secure them quickly. I can't promise that nothing will be removed but we have our information and it is not so simple to move around chemical weapons."

The opposition leader, a defector from the Syrian Army, justified his decision speak to the Israeli publication anonymously because the "countries are still officially at war".

According to Dr Ephraim Asculai, an expert on nuclear weapons at Tel Aviv University, Bashar al-Assad has invested substantial resources in a costly chemical weapons programme, producing home-grown chemical and biological agents in several manufacturing sites across the country.

"[This stockpile] is perhaps the main reason the Israeli government is equipping every Israeli citizen with gas masks and atropine injections," Dr Asculai said.

Israel has expressed deep concern over the fate of the Assad regime's massive stock pile of conventional and non-conventional weapons, which includes surface-to-air missiles, high-trajectory long-range rockets and missiles, biological and chemical weapons since the uprising began in January 2011.

Yigal Palmor, spokesperson for Israel's ministry of foreign affairs, revealed on Tuesday that a pressing concern for the Israeli government is that the Syrian regime "may want to save their unconventional weapons by sending them to custody with Hizbollah".

The Israel defence establishment has previously threatened military action against the Lebanese government if it receives weapons from Syria, which the Jewish state fear will be transferred to arm Hizbollah militants, Assad allies.

It is unlikely to be consoled by the assurances of one anonymous opposition officer, government sources said on Tuesday.